Tainted Ways
by NessieGG
Summary: Former LAPD cop Neji Hyuuga and his old partner Tenten Long must work together again to solve the very case that tore them apart. A fiery romance gone cold threatens their work, however, because neither one can get over the other. [2 parts] [NejiTen] [AU]
1. Old Partners

**Author's Notes:**Written for 50 Alternates and the prompt "hunter." I think I'm addicted to AU NejiTen. As usual, I've given Tenten the last name of Long, since she just can't get by without one in modern times.

Also, this fic will be a two-parter.

**Warning**: This fic deals with mature content, though nothing graphic, including rape and crime, as well as adult sexual relationships. The theme itself is rather dark, so decide for yourself if you want to read or not. I have watched way too much _Law & Order: Special Victims Unit_.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Naruto and am not making any profit from this fan fiction.

**Tainted Ways**

Part One: Old Partners

By Nessie

She wasn't alone when she should have been. Dark eyes flew open, and then warmed metal was beneath her fingers, in her hand, the black barrel of the handgun aimed at the center of the intruder's forehead.

Blank eyes stared impassively down at her, silver in the city lights that silhouetted his form against the window across the room. The eyes did not so much as blink out any alarm. Instead, one side of the mouth below them lifted in subtle approval. "Prepared as always, I see."

She damned his lack of reaction and breathed evenly to calm her traitorously-thundering heart. "What are you doing here, Neji?" Her voice was hoarse and came out roughly, and she tried to remain unaffected by his habitual assessment of her; how her free hand clutched the plain white sheet to her chest, how the cotton fell to clearly outline the curves of her waist, her hip, her thighs and ankles while leaving her tanned arms and shoulders bare. Her cheeks were flushed from sleep, the coloring flattering against the dark of her long, slightly tangled hair, a few waves of which tumbled over her right shoulder. The rest flowed down to pool on her pillow she had pulled the gun from beneath – the gun she continued to aim at him.

"I'm disappointed." He ignored her question. "I've been standing here for five minutes. You used to be faster."

She finally lowered the .44, setting it aside to clash like an ink stain on the colorless bed. Letting his infuriating comment pass, she flicked a glance but didn't want to lose sight of him for long. He had become too unpredictable. "Just tell me what the hell you want."

"Tenten," Neji said, her name sounding like some kind of password. In response, she allowed the tension to unwind in her shoulders. "You gave me a key. You didn't take it back. I have a case, so now's the time to relinquish your offer if that's what you want."

At least he hadn't come to check whether or not she still slept in the nude (though that unconscious five minutes bothered her somewhat). With a sigh, Tenten nodded tiredly. "No, it's…it's fine, just – let me put something on."

As she slipped out of bed, Tenten saw the man turn away with a swing of his lengthy, ebony hair. She wondered at his gentlemanly behavior. After all, he had seen her naked far more than once before. In the dark, she shrugged on and belted a light pink robe, the most girly garment she owned, and then flipped on a bedside lamp before facing him. "Talk fast," she commanded, though admittedly some of the effect was lost as a result of her mussed hair and state of undress. "I have to be at the station in four hours."

But of course, he knew that. Detectives Neji Hyuuga and Tenten Long had been the pride of the Los Angeles Police Department for three years, from 2002 to 2005. Their partnership had been unbreakable, if not infallible, due to their equal passion for the work and their willingness to assist each other. They had been on their way to promotions until one investigation gone horribly awry had gotten far too personal for both of them, resulting in Neji leaving the force for private practice and Tenten continuing solo on the state payroll.

Along with their year-long, private affair coming to an abrupt and icy halt.

Yet, as professionals, they had been civil. Neji had not been unkind and Tenten had not been scathing despite each one's tendencies for such actions in their line of work. She had even allowed him to keep the extra key to her condo along with an open invitation to ask for her help should he ever require it. Neji had moved across town and in the eight months since, he had not even called her.

Tenten allowed, however, that it was much more his style to come to her at a god-awful time of night than when it was actually reasonable. That didn't make it any less of a surprise that he was actually here now.

"I have a lead on the bastard who got to Hinata."

The words were spoken so bluntly that she almost missed their meaning, but once caught, it drove her into the present and out of her thoughts. "What? When? What is it?"

"What do you think?" A note of jerky urgency entered Neji's normally unruffled voice. "It's another rape of a college girl."

Her breath caught. Tenten grasped the underlying point of the clipped statement. It was another girl who wasn't saved. Who _they _hadn't saved. She swallowed, took in the barely-leashed rage that lined his brow and tightened his jaw. "What can I do?" she asked, not the least bit of trepidation unsteadying her voice.

"Pull the records from last spring's files. Talk to Lee, see what he knows. Find out if Shikamaru and Chouji have been dealing with any break-in patterns, particularly in homes with girls in college, maybe late high school." Neji talked with a perfectly focused voice. He trained his eyes not on her, but at a point on the wall just over her head.

"I will," she assured him readily. Then, because she had to know: "What are you going to do?"

"I'll be downtown, asking around myself." He went for the door.

"Do you want coffee?" He stopped, his white shirt brilliant under his tan coat in the lamplight, half of his black hair hanging down his back while the rest hung over his shoulder. Tenten could have rammed her head into the wall with all the energy of a very big, very self-conscious ogre. But the question had been asked from force of habit; she used to always offer him coffee before he left her place.

Neji remembered this – she could see it in the side of his face visible to her – but he answered in a way that mercifully cleared the awkwardness. "I've got some in the car."

When he was out and the door had been relocked, Tenten ran lightly trembling fingers through her hair and exhaled a long breath. Then, starting coffee for herself, she headed toward the shower. There was no way she'd have been able to go back to sleep now.

* * *

Tenten knew that, as their captain, Gai Maitou (everyone called him Gai) blamed himself for the resignation of one of his two best detectives and the perpetual discontent of the other. She also knew that the man had done nothing to jeopardize hers and Neji's last case together or put their relationship on ice.

Even so, when she asked the squad captain later that morning for the case file on Hinata Hyuuga, Gai's swift agreement was entirely too apologetic. "I'll have Lee bring it to you straightaway! If only there was a matching case, then I could do more to—"

"It's okay," Tenten cut in before he could swamp her with his guilt. "We can't make perps appear out of thin air." She decided against telling Gai about her recent visit from Neji lest he get emotional or overprotective or both. "Please just have Lee take it to my desk."

She had an e-mail from Neji by seven-fifteen. The rape victim was biology major Ayame Ichiraku. Teuchi Ichiraku, her father and a chef, was away at a conference, and the girl's room at home had been broken into. According to the records he had received from the downtown L.A. police station, Ayame had been sleeping until she was woken and raped by a masked man four nights ago, a Wednesday. She had gone to the cops only yesterday evening.

Tenten fought back an urge to vomit. Ayame was all right, not hospitalized as Hinata had been, but aspects of the attack shouted a pattern. The rape had occurred mid-week, perfectly timed.

"What'd you need this for?" asked Lee, Gai's personal assistant and her closest friend, when he came with Hinata's file. "I had a bit of a difficult time finding it now that her last name is Uzumaki…" He trailed off when he saw Tenten take a gulping drink from the water bottle she had brought to work. "Are you okay?"

"'Morning, Lee," she replied quickly, forcing cheerfulness. "Yeah, fine. I'm back to Hinata's case."

Lee's usually happy face went grim. He had been there for the investigation and had witnessed the damages when they had failed to find a suspect. "You'll get him this time, Tenten," he told her with full confidence. "Even if Neji isn't here."

"Oh, Neji's here all right," Tenten said, her voice revealing her uncertainty. "Leading the charge, as always." He had never needed a badge to do that.

"Do you need help with anything?"

"No. Thanks though, Lee." She braced herself for reliving the failure of Hinata's case. "If you could just let Chouji and Shikamaru know I'd like to see them if they have a moment?"

Lee promised to do so, and then left her alone to do her job. Tenten lifted the flap of the thick manila envelope and pretended her hands weren't shaking as she drew out the documents.

* * *

"Hinata says she'll do whatever you need. She's pretty shaken up," Neji's cousin-in-law told him on the phone. The detective nodded against the plastic of his cell phone, looking out the window of his tiny apartment/office in downtown Los Angeles. The view showed him pavement, traffic, and people, not one of which he had any interest in at the moment. 

"I don't blame her," he replied. "For now, there's no point in interviewing her again. I have access to the files from nine months ago. I can't promise it'll stay that way."

"Okay, I get it. But I don't want her so stressed, it could be bad on her body." In his mind's eye, Neji could see the blond head of his conversation partner nodding with a rare and worried frown.

"I understand. Just tell her I said to stay calm. Thanks, Naruto." He terminated the call with a flip of his phone. Though he had never admitted as much, Neji liked Naruto. He was the outgoingness his shy cousin lacked, and he had been magnificent support to Hinata after her assault nearly a year ago, never wavering in his desire to marry her. It was thanks to Naruto, Neji was certain, that Hinata had been able to recover her life with any semblance of normalcy.

Unfortunately, he could not say as much for Ayame Ichiraku. She had been alone for a week following her rape because she had been too ashamed to contact her absent father and too scared to go to the police. She had gone to classes, her teachers had reported, but her friends had described her as zombie-like and unfocused, a direct about-face to her usual disposition. Neji would be stunned if she would not need a fortune's worth of therapy after holding onto a secret like that.

He was about to call the downtown police station again to pry the smallest detail that could possibly have been skipped from the squads there when his phone rang once more. "Neji Hyuuga."

"Hyuuga, this is Chouji. Shikamaru thinks you should get uptown. He wants to have a meeting."

Neji's eyes narrowed. "What have you got?"

"An almost-victim, and we think it's the work of the guy you and Tenten were onto earlier this year."

Something inside him twisted brutally at hearing his former partner's name. "And?"

"She saw his face."

* * *

Even after two years of knowing the man, it was a mystery to Neji how Shikamaru Nara had gotten into the LAPD. He boasted only mediocre talents with field work, never having caught a running perp or taken down an armed threat. His partner, Choiji Akimichi, had done, though Chouji's girth belied his skills.

Then Shikamaru met him on the steps leading into the station, and Neji remembered. The slacker was a goddamn _genius_.

"Tenten told me about your cousin's case eleven months ago." Shikamaru had not, at that time, yet been transferred to Gai's division. "Just this morning she loaned the file to Chouji, and he went over it with me. It's a strange guy who would be so meticulous." Neji appreciated the younger cop's focus. Most people would have found a window to inquire after Hinata's wellbeing, and this was neither the time nor the place. Shikamaru stayed on-task. "He knew exactly when she would be alone – father out for the weekend, little sister on a school trip. Hell, the landlord wasn't even there that night."

Neji listened while Shikamaru went over details he already knew. "We questioned the landlord. He was clear."

"Well, that kills that theory." Shikamaru led the independent detective out of the February chill and into a conference room. He didn't bother to introduce anyone at the long table inside; Gai, Lee, Tenten, and Chouji were all known but the arrival, but none of them could say with perfect confidence that they really knew Neji. Shikamaru simply took a chair and gestured for Neji to do the same. "Let's get started. Has everyone been briefed?"

All had. It was Gai, however, who couldn't resist a greeting to his ex-employee. "Welcome back, Neji! Even if you did quit during the height of the summer when criminals run rampant, it is good to see you in our presence once more!"

Neji, who had the misfortune of sitting directly across from Lee, felt a disjointed humiliation, as though Gai had only partially succeeded in alienating him. He saw Tenten's head jerk toward her captain in mild surprise of his poorly-veiled barb. Lee looked unsure of whether to be shocked or amused. Gai's frightening white grin did not fade.

In the end, Tenten was the one to break the ice. "Right, so, Chouji, you have something for us regarding our guy?"

"Shikamaru actually," replied the rotund agent from Neji's left, who kept one hand on a closed bakery box in front of him.

With his head balanced in the palm of one hand, Shikamaru answered in lingering exasperation of his captain, "A friend of mine, Ino Yamanaka—"

"Ex-girlfriend," Chouji whispered to Neji conspiratorially.

"—is in grad school studying horticulture. I wasn't going to bring this up here because she reported it downtown at Captain Sarutobi's station, but Ino had me do the report. She was attacked in her apartment while her roommate, Sakura Haruno, was out on a date." Shikamaru read from a folder on the table in front of him, lifting pages as he went. "The rape wasn't actually committed – she fought him off – but the break-in method was similar to that used with Hinata Hyuuga. Household members out, landlord out."

"What did Asuma say about you taking the file?" asked Gai.

"We have his full support. He's a friend of the Yamanaka family."

"I thought you said she saw him?" Neji asked Chouji.

"She did," said Shikamaru. "But it was late and all the lights were off. He broke through her bedroom window, but she still had curtains over most of it. All she could see was that his eyes were very wide, bloodshot, and he seemed to always be hunched over even when he struggled with her."

"That was what Hinata said!" exclaimed Lee. "Bent over the whole time, like his back was crooked."

"Breaking windows and raping women takes more reliable strength than a severe scoliosis patient would be likely to have," Tenten said placidly. Neji saw an only too-familiar line appear over her nose as she thought. "What about Ayama Ichiraku?"

"She kept her eyes closed throughout the – attack," Neji replied, faltering only because she had met his gaze. "But he threatened her, said she better stay clear of the uptown police. And then the standard power-play filth…"

"He said _uptown_police, specifically?" Chouji reached into his box of doughnuts and began to contemplatively munch.

"That was why Ayama went downtown," Shikamaru observed with a frown. "I wonder if Ino—"

"He might have known Ino knew Asuma," Gai interposed. "and that she would go to him first."

"And Hinata's father's house in only three blocks away from the downtown station." Tenten did not need the file but recited the information from memory. "When she was put into the hospital, the cops down there took the case first before it was passed on to us."

"Why would he leave them a window to crawl through?" Lee asked the room in general. "Why not just scare the girls into staying quiet? A lot of rape kits get lost because they're so terrified."

"We have Hinata's, but there was no matching DNA in the system. I just ran it again, but nobody's got anything on this guy," Tenten reported dutifully. Her hands fisted on the tabletop, the only outward sign of frustration.

Neji stood up. Sitting around and talking was doing only fractional good. "I'm going."

"Where?" Tenten demanded, her eyes sharpening.

"To Hinata's. Maybe she'll think of something we haven't."

"Excellent idea!" praised Gai. "Tenten, go with him."

At that, the female cop froze while in the action of scooting back her chair, her expression mutinous. "Captain, you're kidding me."

"Neji's in on the case, but not without a member of this squad, as this is all confidential information we're merely tossing at him. Otherwise, we cut him loose." Gai smiled jovially. "Your call."

Tenten's eyes shot to his. Neji endured her stare, though she made him feel decidedly uncomfortable, until she blew out an impatient breath. "Fine. Let's go."

Neji followed her out, highly sensitized by her unrestrained disdain. As he was pulling out his keys, "_I'm _driving," she snapped out.

* * *

The drive to Naruto Uzumaki's condominium was blessedly short, and manning the car gaze her something to thrust her attention on, but Neji's presence was a distraction and therefore a cause of discomfiture to Tenten. She realized, however, that she couldn't simply ignore him.

"How's Hinata been doing?" she asked, partly because she genuinely cared for his cousin and partly because the silence was strangling her.

"Fine," he replied tersely. "She's happy."

"Oh, that's…that's good." Tenten released a long exhale. It felt like the days after their first meeting, but instead of being on the receiving end of his resentment, she was feeding Neji hers. "I used to think she'd never get over it."

"Would _you_ have?"

She flicked a glance at him but kept her gaze mainly on the road because LA traffic was hellish. "I wasn't raised the way she was."

"That doesn't answer the question."

Her temper spiked. "Well, you aren't really in a position to ask things, are you?"

"The truth," Neji responded, his voice so calm that Tenten was envious, "is that you would have been because you would tell yourself you would. That's how you do everything. You convince yourself, you don't act on your—"

"No!" Gripping the wheel tightly enough for her knuckles to blanch, Tenten seethed at him as she pulled into the lot next to Naruto's apartment complex. "The only _truth_ is that _you're_ here, on _my_ case, with _my_ squad, and you have _no right_. We both know that, Neji." She jerked the gearshift into park too forcefully and then flashed her eyes at the Hyuuga.

Neji appeared unaffected by the cold way she dismissed him. "You have had two chances to keep us apart, Tenten. You did not deny me your help or refuse my own."

Only because she had known Gai would have kept him on board anyway to make use of his connections. "And?" she challenged, because damn it, she couldn't think of anything else to say.

Neji reached for the door handle on his side. "And now you're stuck with me."

He was out and closing the door before Tenten could gain enough control of herself to follow without punching him in his pretty face. They did not speak as they went up to the Uzumaki condo.

When the familiar, slightly mischievous face of Naruto Uzumaki met them, it was with a wide grin and a loud greeting. "I didn't think you'd be coming by so soon, Neji." Tenten couldn't be sure, but she thought she detected some displeasure in the blond's voice before her turned to her in full excitement. "Hi, Tenten!"

"Hi, Naruto." She had always liked him even if he was a tad overwhelming. "Is your wife home?"

"Of course, she doesn't go out too much nowadays. Hinata! We're coming in!"

Tenten thought that an odd thing to say in such a cheerful tone. Naruto led the two of them into the main living room. Tenten spotted Hinata rising from the couch very slowly…because she was very pregnant.

Even through her immense surprise, she could see that Hinata Uzumaki still embodied everything Tenten sorely lacked as a woman: grace, gentleness, patience. Her short hair, dark as Neji's, was neatly combed and styled unlike Tenten's hasty, messy buns. She held herself well, though there had been a time when she had always seemed to be hiding. Marriage had transformed her into a confident, self-accepting woman. Tenten momentarily switched her envy from one Hyuuga to the other.

"It's so good to see you," Hinata said to her warmly, and Tenten moved forward to give her a perhaps too careful hug over her large stomach. "I thought you would be here before long. I heard of Ayame on the news." Her eyes lowered. "So I had hoped to be able to help."

"That's why we're here," Neji explained shortly. "I don't imagine you have a more detailed description of your attacker after this long?"

Tenten wished she were close enough to him to step on his foot or something equally immature. He was being such an unemotional jerk!

Hinata placed on hand on her stomach, as though to shield her unborn child from either her own experiences or Neji's necessary detachment. "I'm afraid not. Unless – you have something?"

They relayed Ino Yamanka's updated description of the rapist, which Hinata confirmed at once. "But I told you that a year ago."

"I know," Neji said, bothered by it. "The only connection we have between you all is that you were all motherless college girls at the time of the attack, whose fathers were absent and, besides that, quite rich."

"That's connection enough," Tenten pointed out, helping Hinata back into her seat as Naruto sat on the other side of his wife. Neji's eyes, identical to those of the woman they were visiting, went warningly to hers but she lifted her chin defiantly. "What we need to know is, besides personal gratification, what motive would he have for setting you all up to go to the downtown station rather than Captain Gai's uptown?"

Naruto, after considering, presented his thought. "What if it's you two? Your partnership was pretty well-known at the time. What if the bastard's one of those sickos who likes a playing hide-and-seek with good seekers?"

Apparently not good enough, Tenten couldn't help but think. "Possibly. But he didn't keep it up with clues or anything. Neji…" She caught herself before she could intone _ran off_, remembering that Hinata was Neji's cousin and speaking ill of him in front of her was of high rudeness. "Neji moved on to private work because the case was closed. So he didn't win."

Neji spoke quietly from behind her, his words cutting. "But neither did we."

Hinata, though useful in her willingness to have her Sunday afternoon interrupted, did not provide any new inspiration for the case. But Tenten did feel rejuvenated on it; spending time with the younger woman had reignited her drive and yearning to get Mrs. Uzumaki's rapist off the streets and in jail where he belonged. And while Neji said nothing to her during the drive back to Gai's station, she was sure he felt the same way.

Which meant, Tenten reflected, he wouldn't be leaving anytime soon.

_To Be Continued_


	2. New Lovers

**Author's Notes**: The second and final part. I appreciate all the feedback, everyone! This is a new style of fic for me so I wasn't sure how it would go over, but I'm glad a lot of you seem to be enjoying it. I hope you enjoy the end, too!

Also, **Roses of Sharon** was kind enough to point out that there were some problems with chapter one. I apologize for these. Like I said, too much Law & Order! "Perps" is cop slang for perpetrators. (Now, look! You are that much more knowledgeable!)

Also, for those who aren't writers on the site, has a dysfunction that occasionally causes words to run together without spaces (ex: withoutspaces). That is (usually!) not my fault. I'm pretty good at catching such things, but I apologize for the inconvenience in the reading.

**Disclaimer:**I do not own Naruto and am making no profit from this fan fiction.

**Tainted Ways**

Part Two: New Lovers

By Nessie

Hell, Neji thought when he arrived home that night after visiting Naruto and Hinata. and Annoyed at coming home without any new leads, he pulled out the first thing he touched in his fridge – a covered plate of pizza – and practically threw it into the microwave.

Tenten, he mentally fumed. Tenten, Tenten, _Tenten_…was being uncooperative, deliberately difficult, and altogether defensive toward him. What did she think he was going to do? Take a sledgehammer and go Berlin on those emotional walls of hers?

The case wasn't about emotions anyway. And he was only with her for the case. It wasn't as though he was not aware that the situation was awkward, and it wasn't as though she didn't realize the situation was _necessary_. They had been the ones hunting the prick before; they had to be the ones to do it now. Though had he still been on the force, Neji imagined she would have already requested a partner exchange.

The microwave went off, and he ignored it for a moment to give his coat a spirited toss into his desk chair right beside his bed in the small, spartanly furnished apartment. She could pair up with Shikamaru if she wanted to, but then they'd be all Bullets and Brains and no street man to balance them out.

And besides all that, it didn't make sense to him that she was still so damn sexy. Weren't women supposed to go into deep depression when their lovers left them, scoff junk food and take up soap opera-watching?

Then again, Tenten was a policewoman. Neji hesitated before biting into his pizza, temporarily scared _he _was acting like a typical woman before dismissing the notion as absurd. He didn't own a television, at any rate.

Had she even missed him?

But what did it matter, he asked himself as he yanked apart his button-down shirt and dropped it into a clothes hamper – tiny as it was, he made sure to keep his place neat. He was working, she was working, it wasn't as though they'd had time the last eight months to reminisce about the field assignments, the office hours, the sex…

_Damn it._

He hadn't actually left her, at any rate. They had broken up after a discussion. For God's sake, he had her spare key in his coat pocket. (That fact had admittedly been the cause of distraction for him over the last eight months.) It was just…there had been moments in his life he had only ever found with her – moments as mundane as looking up from his desk to see Tenten at hers and tapping a pen against the side of her mouth, or waking to the light stroke of her fingers over his stomach at three o' clock in the afternoon on a day off.

Neji dropped into bed with a self-reprimand. These things were irrelevant to the matter at hand. Her tenderness toward him had clearly dissipated; his investment in her had dissolved long ago. They had themselves to rely on. The current arrangement was only temporary and, beyond that, cumbersome. They would both be better off after this case was closed.

He was turning on his side, lights off and drifting, when his cell phone rang, shrill and detestable.

"What?" he snapped without checking to see who the caller was.

"Put your clothes back on and come over," Tenten ordered briskly. "I was just sent a match on the DNA from Hinata's rape kit."

* * *

After an hour, Tenten was starting to wonder if her cell phone had joined with the flesh of her right cheek. "No, Shikamaru...he's not supposed to be in the database, not really...of course it counts! What judge would rule it out?" She did her best to ignore the sound of her front door opening and closing, to focus on the officer she was speaking to and not the nearing scent she was so familiar with. "Whether he should be there or not doesn't change the fact that it's a match. But I'll need you to have Lee check up on him, the guy had a lot of paperwork done over the last year. Doesn't even have the same name...fine...yeah, just have him call me when he's done, four hours or whatever...no, I'm not gonna sleep, who the hell sleeps anymore?" 

Tenten flipped her phone shut and turned in the swivel chair at her home desk to face Neji...who stood stony-faced and dripping wet all over her carpet.

"Jesus, is it raining out there?" She tossed a look at the windows, which indeed ran with rivulets.

Neji gathered his hair, even darker wet, at the base of his neck and squeezed so that a small waterfall trailed down his back. Tenten didn't know whether to appreciate the sight or be irritated at the increasing dampness of her floor. "It started on my way here," he said. "I didn't think to grab my coat at the house."

She decided vaulting into talking shop would be the best method of keeping her tongue from hanging out. "Turns out the database has been on the fritz the last two days; I just heard from Sai at that department about two hours ago. So they ran Hinata's assaulter again and we found," she rolled her chair to the left so he could get a look at her laptop computer screen, "this guy."

Neji approached her right side and bent to get a good view of the photograph on her e-mail. The sudden propinquity made her breathe slowly in. "Never heard of him."

"Well, supposedly they entered his saliva instead of some other suspect's by mistake a few months ago. I don't even want to know how that happened." Tenten's eyes narrowed. She didn't like the look of the guy, with his strange eyes and oddly-angled head. It wasn't an official mug shot; chances were a force photographer had snapped him when testing a camera or visual computer program. She told herself not to judge based on appearances, and then told herself Neji did not really smell that good and the outline of muscle enhanced by his sopping work shirt was really only so-so and...crap.

"Go take a shower or something, okay?" she said without really thinking.

Neji's reaction was little more than a turn of his head toward her while he was still lowered at her sitting level. It took all of Tenten's willpower to keep her eyes on the computer screen. "What?"

"The last thing I need is for you to get sick and have to abandon the case," explained the female cop in a hurry.

"I thought you wanted me off the case?"

"Well, you're already here."

Neji straightened, and Tenten nearly sighed in relief. Distance, she thought, was favorable right now. "All right," he said after some consideration, though his tone came with caution. "Anything else?"

"Just leave your clothes by the door, and I'll run them through the dryer, I guess." Tenten waited for his steps to end and the sound of the bathroom door shutting, wondering if that I-guess had seemed too forced. When the exhaust fan and water could be heard running, she exhaled the breath she had been more or less holding since he had walked into her place.

This wasn't going to work. It just wasn't. She wanted to kill Gai for setting her up like this (and he had, that ridiculous puppeteer). Maybe she could go work for Asuma Sarutobi downtown. He had expressed interest in her skills before. And it would be less incriminating than seeing to Gai's demise.

Standing, she made her way at a pathetically slow pace toward the bathroom, then pressed her fingers to her temples. She had intended for Neji to leave his clothes _outside _the door. Building her inner strength by reminding herself this was her territory and Neji knew that, she opened the door with intent to grab his wet things and bolt.

She remembered too late that the shower with its transparent glass doors directly faced the bathroom entrance. And, in this instance, so did Neji.

Had she been able to think properly, Tenten would have reasoned that any warm blooded woman who liked men who have stared like a deer in the headlight at the sight of Neji Hyuuga (a nude Hyuuga under a running shower head) who stared right back with placid, pearl eyes, which would justify her own staring.

As it was, she could _not_think at _all_, let alone properly. So she made little of it when Neji very calmly pushed open the door of the shower. Even with the exhaust fan, the room was filled with steam because, like her, Neji liked a scalding shower – and Tenten wasn't sure she was not melting, but that was different.

When he grabbed her wrist and tugged, she tried to school her features into an arrangement of dispassion, like she had expected it. Despite the effort, she must have looked as stunned as she felt because there was a triumphant gleam in those pale eyes although his mouth remained unsmiling.

"I need you to decide," he said lowly (and she nearly collapsed because he'd pulled her right up against him to speak to her and it didn't matter that she'd seen all of it before because God, it was Neji and had his voice always been that sultry?), "if you want me here or if you don't. I'll stay or leave. It depends on you."

He meant the case. At least Tenten thought he was referring to the case. "I..." Damn, how did words go again? "I want you here." And she thought she meant the case as well.

Neji breathed deeply, which didn't help matters because it only pushed his chest closer to hers. "Tenten."

His shoulders were warm and wet beneath her fingers – wait, when had she begun touching him? - and his eyelids were beginning to droop but she could definitely feel his hands on her waist, whether to stop or support her, Tenten didn't know.

The fact was, she realized as his thumb began to stroke the skin just under the hem of her sweater at her back, this had been coming ever since she had woken up to aim a gun at him from beneath a thin sheet. This was decent enough payback for dropping in on her while she was naked, but it wasn't nearly enough to satisfy either of them.

"I want you here," she repeated, and Neji breathed out.

When he jerked her again, this time into the shower so that her clothes became as wet as his within moments, his mouth matched the gleam in his eyes. She didn't have time to look at him, however, because the third jerk brought her lips to his and then there was no need to wonder where his hands were because they were everywhere.

And the last eight months had been hell.

Tenten thought it was stupid that she had only now discovered that. To make up for it, she kissed him while he ruined her hair buns and threw out her clothes to add to the soaked messed outside of the shower.

She had forgotten starting over could feel so good.

* * *

What had he been thinking about an uncooperative, difficult, defensive Tenten three or so hours ago? Neji couldn't remember. He watched her as she typed furiously in alternation with gulping from a large mug of freshly-brewed Folgers, hair drying in tangled waves that fell in her face from her hastily restyled buns. He hadn't exactly forgotten the energy with which she threw herself into work after a bout of passion, but it had been a long time since he had seen it in action. 

Drinking from his own mug, he studied the swift paths her fingers took over the keyboard as she wrote up a timeline of the case so far, her brow furrowing when she occasionally paused to think of an appropriate word or phrase to add to the file. Her posture was better than that of most, but she would probably still have back problems later on in life. And she would whine, he was sure, the way she tended to with little frustrations – like vacuuming, he recalled now. For some reason she had always hated vacuuming. He smiled faintly at the random thought. Tenten was very much her own person.

After another minute, she looked up without warning and their eyes met over the top of her computer. Neither one said anything. She fingered one sleeve of the shirt she had put on, and Neji noticed his, though dry now, was still completely unbuttoned. Tenten smiled. Their coffee steamed in their hands.

Her cell phone went off, and she jumped a bit. It was now a struggle for him to keep his face straight, but he listened carefully as she answered the call.

"Lee? Hi!" That "hi" was probably too energetic. Lee would suspect something. "Yeah, I was about to mail a report to Gai – what? At the...okay." As simple as that, she stood up and lifted her coat from where it had been previously tossed over a table stool. "We're supposed to meet Lee at the downtown police station."

And they were partners again, Neji Hyuuga and Tenten Long. Officers. Lovers.

* * *

The rain had fortunately let up. Lee waited in front of the doors for them, and if he noticed that his current teammate and former one walked closer than they had been, he did not mention it. 

"Did you find the guy from the database?" asked Neji. He shoved his hands in his pockets, the fabric still warm from Tenten's dryer. Lee nodded. "So why are we here?"

"Because_he's_ here," Lee told him.

Tenten looked through one of the glass station doors in surprise, as though their man would be standing right there. "Are you serious? Somebody already caught him?"

"No, not that. He _works_ here!"

Neji started in before either of them could say another word. "Talk and walk, Lee."

"Tenten was right when she found out the guy had a lot of documents to go through. It took quite a while to reach back through everything. However," the bowl-haired man victoriously declared, "once I did, I learned that he had changed his entire identity to be given a position here."

"He's a _cop_?" The incredulity did not hide itself in Tenten's voice.

"No." They rounded a corner inside, passing Captain Sarutobi's office, though Neji had been sure that was where they had been headed. Instead, Lee led them forward until they arrived at a slim threshold where the door stood ajar, and a single hanging bulb lit the cramped interior of a janitorial closet.

"Mr. Kinuta?" Lee inquired, checking a picture in his hand, the same one Neji had seen on Tenten's laptop. Small print in the bottom left corner, Neji saw, read _Dosu Kinuta._

The man who Neji had not seen occupying the closet now appeared, broom in one hand, a roll of paper towels in the other. He wore a baseball cap. His right eye in addition to his nose and mouth was obscured by what looked to be a yard of Ace bandages. His visible left eye immediately swung to Tenten, and Neji felt the sudden urge to step in front of her, but Tenten placed on hand on his arm, stilling him, without removing her eyes from Kinuta.

"Help you?"

"I believe so. But first, can you tell us why you are wearing those bandages?" Lee's politeness was unfaltering. "Are you injured?"

"Oh, no." The man's voice sounded like gravel scattering beneath the roll of tires. "The fumes in the cleaning products, you know. I try to keep from breathing 'em in."

"That's a good idea," Tenten said prosaically, taking a look at the photo Lee held. "Maybe you should try wearing those the next time you decide to rape a woman."

At that, the custodian's eyes went wide, and Neji saw very clearly in his mind the drawing a sketch artist had done almost a year ago using Hinata's description of her attacker.

"I didn't--"

"Yes, you did." Tenten's voice was so steady, but Neji was still missing one detail. All three of the girls – Hinata, Ayame, and Ino – had told them of a hunch in their guy's back. Kinuta suffered from no hunch.

Dosu Kinuta shifted, and Neji went on alert. He knew when a guy looked like he was about to bolt. Sure enough, the broom and paper towels went down, and Kinuta took off. Lee dropped his picture. Tenten's gun was out in as much time, and Neji dashed forward. Lee caught up and then passed him a moment later, but even Lee wasn't faster than a bullet. A shot rang out, and then Kinuta was clutching at his left elbow.

And there was the hunch, just as the sketch artist had guessed it would be.

Both Neji and Lee had Kinuta in their unforgiving grips in the next two seconds. Tenten went to join them at the end of the hall just as Captain Sarutobi burst from his office, lit cigarette in his mouth, to demand what the hell was going on.

"What happened?" Tenten asked Kinuta when she was near him. "Did I tickle your arm? Or did I shatter your whole elbow?"

"Bitch! You – goddamn – bitch!"

If Neji punched him in the shoulder over his ruined elbow, it was entirely due to reflex. Well, mostly.

"Tell us why," Lee ordered Kinuta, his eyes narrowed solemnly. "Why would you opt to be right here after what you did?"

Kinuta gave a dry chuckle through his obvious pain. "For one thing, I already worked here before that little white-eyed girl. Those girls came here, didn't they? If I was here, I could see them again, couldn't I?"

Tenten recoiled. "You sick..."

"That sounded like a confession." Neji tightened his hold on Kinuta but met her eyes. "Why don't you go home, Tenten, and get started on the report? Lee and I will finish here." Tenten stared at him for a moment, then nodded once, before locking the safety on her gun and holstering it. "Actually," Neji amended, "give Hinata a call. Tell her everything's fine."

At that, Tenten smiled. "What about you?"

Neji inclined his head. "I'll be along."

For the next two hours, Neji ignored astonished sputtering from Lee and fielded confused expletives from Captain Sarutobi who insisted on smoking a cigarette through the story of Dosu Kinuta, then had to wait for Gai to arrive to tell it all again.

But when it was done, and Kinuta was officially behind bars to await trial, Neji went home. And it wasn't to his tiny apartment where he had received second-rate commissions from people who may or may not have had a real problem.

It was to a woman whose ways were pure and amusing and things he admired. And Tenten, he knew, felt precisely the same way about him.

"What just happened?" she asked the next day when she was wearing that girly pink robe and Neji took his turn at making the coffee. As smart as she was, she could adopt a genuinely mystified expression that made him hate the number of times he'd missed his chance at seeing it in their time apart. "Between us?"

Kissing her, he gave the most honest answer he had. "You love me." Saying the less self-centered reverse was unnecessary.

When Neji rejoined the Los Angeles Police Department one month later, his life was more or less the same but for the fact that he had sold his apartment and that Detectives Hyuuga and Long were now Detectives Hyuuga and Hyuuga.

**The End**


End file.
